


it's the wrong direction that your teeth are bared

by getmean



Series: last of us au [2]
Category: The Pacific (TV)
Genre: Jealousy, M/M, Mutual Pining, Protectiveness, The Last of Us AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-07
Updated: 2020-05-07
Packaged: 2021-03-03 05:01:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24059392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/getmean/pseuds/getmean
Summary: In the dim room, Snafu sees Eugene’s eyes flick to his own. The gesture steadies him, re-orients Snafu back into his tight orbit around Eugene and Eugene’s safety. Forget these guys. Forget how Eugene looks at the one who’d introduced himself as Burgie. Forget holding hands with Eugene in that dark backroom as Snafu had thumbed through his memories, had handed them out to him like playing cards. Forget it.
Relationships: Merriell "Snafu" Shelton/Eugene Sledge
Series: last of us au [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1735681
Comments: 7
Kudos: 22





	it's the wrong direction that your teeth are bared

**Author's Note:**

> commission for @spreadyourwings-smiling-angel over on tumblr :~) i hope you love it!!

They rise with the sun the following morning; the both of them stiff and bruised all over from their run-in with the gang the previous day. Snafu had gone to sleep with a headache, had woken with one.

“Didn’t you say you weren’t gonna sleep?” Eugene asks him, and Snafu just grunts. 

The city glitters in the dawn, the day hazy and close already. Snafu’s glad to be out in the fresh air though, glad to escape that swampy spoiled milk smell inside the bodega, and he takes a great big lungful of it in as they creep along through the quiet, early morning streets. Eugene ahead of him today, so Snafu can keep an eye on his limp.

“Does it hurt?” he asks, and Eugene throws a glance over his shoulder. Big brown eyes swallowing Snafu up as easy as anything.

“Not as bad as it could,” Eugene murmurs, which is really very unlike him. Snafu would be surprised, if he wasn’t letting his head fill up with the ghost-memory of Eugene’s head on his shoulder. “How’s your head?” he asks, and Snafu blinks, and refocuses.

_Are you gonna mention it, or am I gonna have to?_ he thinks. Out loud, he murmurs, “Never had any complaints,” to which Eugene rolls his eyes.

They barely make it a mile from where they’d spent the night before the stupidity of trying to move around in the daytime makes itself clear to them. Twice they have to duck inside alleyways because of distant voices, the two of them pressed against the bricks, blinking sweat from their eyes as they kept as silent and still as possible.

“I dunno why there’s so much movement here,” Snafu hisses. “Should’ve avoided the city completely.”

“Would’ve added a day to our trip,” Eugene breathes, and Snafu kisses his teeth.

“Gonna add more than a day if we get killed.”

Eugene scowls at him. “Surely we’re not —”

Movement, in the street. The low roar of motorcycles, getting louder as they approach. Snafu has his ears pricked so hard he’s sure they must be on stalks. Every muscle in his body locked and frozen as they fall silent, and listen. Snafu’s heart is banging against his ribcage, and a quick glance at Eugene’s face shows him spooked and pale. 

Snafu glances down the alley, caught between making a run for it and risking someone seeing them, and staying glued to the brick wall, completely obvious if anyone so much as glances into the alley. The motorcycles are getting closer. Snafu blinks sweat from his eyes, just as Eugene’s hand clutches at his wrist. 

“Okay,” Snafu mutters, low. “Follow me.”

Snafu doesn’t know this city but he knows _cities_. If there isn’t some easily-jimmied door at the bottom of this alleyway, well. They’ll be in trouble, to say the least. 

They slip along the wall, the rising noise of the motorcycles filling the air. All worries about headaches and strange tender nights are gone; Snafu overshoots the doorway and nearly skids to a stop to double back. Then his hand finds the knob, which — to his great surprise — turns, and he and Eugene fall into the dark room on the other side of it in a panting, sweating tangle. 

And in the silence that follows, a gun cocks. 

Snafu steps in front of Eugene before he even registers the movement. The room is so dark the blackness feels textured, layered, nothing but the strained stillness of whoever they’re now sharing the room with, and their own ragged breaths. Still, Snafu tries to peer through it, shuffling backwards as silently as possible with Eugene a clueless, frozen shape at his back. He tries to plot where the doorway is without looking away from all that deep darkness; as he strains his eyes things begin to swim into focus. The edging of light around boarded up windows. A pocket of deeper dark that must be — 

The noise of shifting clothing, and then a light flares, and Snafu squints against it; blinded but not willing to close his eyes as he works to look beyond the sudden illumination.

Two men. One, drawing his hand away from the camping light he’d so readily blinded the two of them with. The other crouched stock still and serious, back to the wall and handgun pointed unerringly at Snafu’s face. They look like they’ve been bedded down in the building for a while; the light has illuminated the place as an abandoned bar, mossy stone walls and splintered furniture, a camp stove and sleeping bags set up in a cleared space. And the guns, plural. Snafu has just spotted the one on the hip of the man who’d turned the light on. 

A tense moment passes. To Snafu, it feels an age, brain working overtime as his eyes flick from gun to gun to face to face. Doorway, boarded-over windows, could he pull his gun first? 

Then Eugene speaks. “We’re just trying to leave the city.” His voice small, and croaky, shattering the tension as easily as they’d stumbled into it. The man holding the gun lowers it; the man who’d lit the lamp grins. Snafu blinks at the boarded up window he’d been mentally preparing to make a break for, his animal-brain so caught up in danger that he snatches at Eugene’s wrist as he goes to take a step towards them.

“Easy,” the-man-with-the-gun says. His blue eyes are bright and shrewd on Snafu, leaving him with the unsettling feeling of being looked through as they flick over him to rest on Eugene. Then he smiles; disarming in its warmth. “We’re headed the same way.”

Snafu glances at Eugene, who is smiling back. “That’s lucky,” he says, and Snafu decides it’s time to step in.

“If you’re leavin’, how come it looks like you’ve been here for a while?” He lets the suspicion drip into his voice. Eugene pokes at his back; Snafu ignores him. 

To his surprise, it’s not the man with the gun but the other one who replies, throwing Snafu a shit-eating grin as he says, “Only idiots would travel in the day here.”

Snafu bristles, and Eugene seems to sense how close he is to biting the guy’s head off, as he lays a hand on Snafu’s shoulder, and asks, “What are your names?”

Again, the tension thaws. Snafu wonders if it’s a certain gift of Eugene’s to smooth things over, or whether it’s just a gift of his own to ruffle things up. The guy who had goaded Snafu reveals himself as Bill, a short guy who seems to wear that smile like uniform. The other man is Burgie — a Texan, judging by his broad, rolling accent — who shakes first Eugene’s hand and then Snafu’s own, and looks them both in the eye while he’s at it.

“Movin’ around here during the day ain’t safe,” he murmurs, once the introductions have been made and Snafu is feeling marginally less like he’d like to break for the door and drag Eugene right along with him. “You can stay here until night, if you like. We were gonna make a break for it after sundown.”

In the dim room, Snafu sees Eugene’s eyes flick to his own. The gesture steadies him, re-orients Snafu back into his tight orbit around Eugene and Eugene’s safety. Forget these guys. Forget how Eugene looks at the one who’d introduced himself as Burgie. Forget holding hands with Eugene in that dark backroom as Snafu had thumbed through his memories, had handed them out to him like playing cards. Forget it. 

He tips his chin up. “And how come you know it’s so dangerous to be out there in the day?” 

Burgie blinks at him. “Have you been outside for longer than a few minutes?” Behind him, Bill cracks up. 

Sheepishly, Eugene murmurs, “Yeah, we kinda ran into some of them yesterday.”

Snafu closes his eyes at the body-memory of his head getting bounced off the sidewalk. “Alright, we’ll stay,” he says, and it hurts to say it. He has always hated to defer to others; it’s why he sticks to keeping himself alone in the first place. Eugene’s his first travelling companion in years, and now look at them. Hunkering down with a couple strangers to wait out a day he knows will drag.

“Thank you,” Eugene adds, to which Burgie smiles, and Snafu’s back prickles with annoyance. 

Their unexpected shelter is dim and low-ceilinged, but smells miles better than that close stink of the bodega, so Snafu thinks he’ll be able to manage the interminable wait for nightfall. To his great disgust, the bar is absolutely stripped. He finds only a warm, dented can of Red Bull, and drinks that sulkily as he pokes around the place, leaving Eugene to Burgie’s apparent charms. Overturned tables, their spindly legs to the heavens, good for little else but firewood now; a dirty, scuffed-up perspex dance floor that Snafu shuffles around the edges of as he sips at the old energy drink. He can imagine the place as it might have been, years ago. Dark and pounding with music, full of the smell of bodies and perfume and liquor. 

“I’m from Alabama,” he hears Eugene say, and then Burgie’s low, interested hum. 

“You’re far from home,” Burgie replies, and when Snafu looks, he’s got that completely disarming smile on his face again, bright blue eyes all squinted up from it. “Brave of you,” he adds, and Snafu has to fight against a groan trying to force its way out of him. And worst of all, Eugene ducks his head, and shrugs, eyes flicking quickly to Snafu; just quick enough that he doesn’t look away in time, and their eyes meet.

“Well, I wouldn’t have made it this far without Snafu,” Eugene murmurs, holding Snafu’s eye. Burgie glances; levels that smile on Snafu too. 

“Oh yeah? Snafu, whereabouts are you from?”

It feels too close to his and Eugene’s midnight murmurs of the previous night. “Ain’t from nowhere anymore,” he snaps, and Bill snorts. Snafu swings his gaze away from Eugene’s big brown eyes, onto him. “What’s your problem, man?” 

Bill’s eyebrows raise. “What’s yours?”

Snafu feels like a tiger in a cage. He paces from one wall to another, edges his finger in the crack between particle board and window, listens to the low murmuring of the three men talking amongst each other. 

“Hey, Snafu.” Burgie’s voice. “Are you hungry?”

Snafu glances around, his empty stomach twisting at the mere mention of some food. The last thing he’d eaten were those beans with Eugene the night before — now the Red Bull is hitting his hollowed-out stomach a little hard, and the idea of something to cushion it is enough to have him crossing the room to join Eugene and the others. 

“We’ve got food,” he mutters, slinging his pack down as he takes a careful seat on the floor. The place is littered with dirt and dust, but there’s no pools of stagnant water so Snafu wishes he and Eugene had found this place first. The boarded-over windows, that heavy door. They could’ve waited out the week until Eugene’s ankle was feeling better, instead of making as poor a start at an escape as they did today. Snafu glances to him now, pulling the small sack of oats he and Snafu have been working their way through for breakfast over the past few mornings, and then down at his ankle. Innocuous, laced up in his boot once more. Snafu wonders if it hurts him like his head is aching at him.

They get to talking, as the food cooks. Snafu doesn’t feel so good about Eugene sharing part of their meagre supply with the guys, but keeps quiet about it. Keeps quiet in general, sitting apart from their little circle as he smokes a cigarette and keeps an ear out for what Eugene is telling them. He knows he looks like an asshole. But wariness has gotten him a long way in life, and it’s not something Snafu feels ready to give up any time soon. Get Eugene to the facility, first, get that blood out of him and into a vaccine, and then maybe he’ll think about relaxing his guard a little. 

Again, his mind so helpfully reminds him of the previous night, of the odd show of vulnerability Eugene had so successfully coaxed him into. Snafu plans to blame it on the concussion, if what he’s feeling flexing its wings in his chest isn’t felt by Eugene too. 

“Burg and I met on a highway runnin’ through Texas,” Bill is saying, nudging at the knob on the camp stove to turn the flame higher. “Well, more like he came across me.”

“Bill was tryin’ to get outta the quarantine zone like me,” Burgie explains, eyes bright in the low light of the room. “But when we ran across each other he was real sick — “ he looks to Bill, and smiles wryly, “ — had this gash on his leg that was infected, huh?”

“My own damn fault,” Bill mutters, rolling his eyes. “Sliced it on sheet metal in a scrap yard I was pokin’ ‘round in, lookin’ for shit I could use on the road.”

“What,” Eugene asks, curious, and Snafu glances at him from under his lashes. “So you stopped to help him? Most people wouldn’t.” 

Snafu drops his eyes to his lap, to the crushed pack of cigarettes he’s toying with. _Most people’ve got more sense_ , he wants to say, but keeps his mouth shut for once. If Eugene wasn’t around he’d say it, but right now he doesn’t want to offer up any more points of comparison between him and Burgie. Eugene might be sat against Snafu’s side, but his eyes have been on the other man since that light had flared.

Burgie shrugs. “Times like these, you gotta treat everyone like they’re your own family.”

Snafu follows Eugene’s gaze just to try and see what he may be seeing. Burgie’s handsome, Snafu thinks; that kind of broad, honest face that makes him seem warm and friendly. Not like Snafu himself, mean-faced and closed-off as he’s sure he is. No, Burgie is open, an unknown, it’s no wonder Eugene seems to be so starry-eyed. After all, it’s weird to go from just the two of them, out on the road together, to suddenly breaking bread with strangers. He’s probably glad for a break from Snafu and all his pessimism.

That’s how Snafu figures, anyway. Nicer to think Eugene’s just grateful for a new face, some new stories, than to think he’s not nursing something as tender as what Snafu is nursing for him. 

But does Eugene look at Snafu like he looks at Burgie? The man’s describing how he brought Bill back from the brink of death — whatever, he was probably just running a goddamn fever — and Eugene is sat with his chin pillowed on his knuckles, nodding along and listening better than he ever has when Snafu’s had something _important_ to say. Shit, if he hung on every single one of Snafu’s words like that, maybe he wouldn’t have drank that rotten fucking rainwater a few days into their journey and gotten sick as a dog.

If he sounds resentful, it’s because he is. Staring hard at the pack of cigarettes in his hands — trying to work out if this whole situation necessitates one — trying to ignore that jealous resentment. Should he be more open with Eugene? Is that what it is? Last night was the very first time Snafu had told the kid anything about himself, beyond his name. 

Maybe he’s being an idiot caring about something this cosmically-insignificant in the middle of all this. Everything had felt so much easier before that little bird in his chest had begun to shift in its shell. 

“We haven’t met many others so far,” Eugene says, and his elbow nudges at Snafu’s side, upsetting him from his thoughts. “Have we, Snaf?” 

“Not anybody who weren’t out for our blood,” Snafu mutters, and decides a cigarette now would not be a cigarette wasted. He quits toying with the pack, and sticks one in his mouth, catching Bill’s eye as he lights it. The guy’s watching him closely, almost as goddamn starry-eyed as Eugene. Suspiciously, Snafu mumbles out, “What?” around his smoke.

“Where’d you get those?” Bill asks, eyes tracking Snafu’s cigarette as he pulls it away from his mouth. When Snafu looks to Burgie, he’s watching the cigarette similarly. Snafu pulls a face.

“Found a pack in the place me and Eugene camped out last night.”

“Lucky bastard,” Bill breathes, and a long, expectant pause shoulders its way in between them all. Snafu hangs his head, and sighs. 

This is why he doesn’t like to travel with anyone else. Maybe it’s not the main reason, but it sure as hell is a reason.

“You guys want one?” he asks, and the coldness between them thaws as quickly as Burgie and Bill light up their ill-gotten cigarettes. 

“God,” Bill moans, exhaling beatifically, eyes rolling up to the ceiling like it’s a good lay, not a stale old cigarette. “I’ve missed that.” Burgie makes a similar noise of pleasure, and Snafu glances between them, bemused, a smile curling his mouth despite himself.

“You’re tellin’ me this is your first smoke in a while?” he asks, in disbelief. They nod, and Snafu rolls his eyes. “You’ve gotta readjust your priorities.”

The day passes more quickly, after that. Snafu warms to Bill, who reminds him of a guy he used to hang out with when he was a teenager, back before everything started getting so goddamn scary. He even warms to Burgie, against Snafu’s own jealous better judgement, though it’s impossible to find fault in the guy — he’s unceasingly _good_. Even when Snafu and Eugene’s dodging of perfectly normal questions becomes conspicuous, the guy doesn’t push or prod. But still there’s a part of Snafu that stays wary, that stays distant, for all of the parts of Eugene that don’t. It reminds Snafu just how much Eugene needs his guidance; reminds him just how far he needs to grow. 

It feels good, when Eugene looks to him as they’re packing up to leave. Not to Burgie, not to Bill. To _him_. Because when has he ever led Eugene astray? Maybe he isn’t stopping for every half-dead idiot he comes across, but Snafu likes to think he’s good when he needs to be. And right now, he needs to be. 

“It’ll be fine,” he murmurs, touching his fingers to the back of Eugene’s hand. They’re lingering together by the doorway, Burgie and Bill still rolling up their sleeping bags and getting squared away across the room. The lamp has been packed away, leaving them to navigate the pitch black room by touch alone. Behind him, Bill stumbles over something, and curses. Eugene’s fingers curl around Snafu’s. 

“Maybe we should stay here another day,” he breathes, and Snafu wishes so badly he could see Eugene’s face. Just to try and gauge the emotion that’s only barely bleeding through in his voice. “My ankle — I don’t wanna slow everythin’ down.”

Snafu squeezes his fingers, and just like last night, this shit is easier in the darkness. The softness. Gently, Snafu murmurs, “I don’t wanna stay in this city a minute longer. Feels bad here, like the infected ain’t the thing to be scared of.”

Eugene shuffles. “Maybe you’re right.”

“I am.”

A pause, in which Snafu senses Eugene gearing up to something. He can’t put his finger on why he can sense it, but it’s something. A particular kind of silence from the kid. It occurs to him that he may know Eugene better than he’s known somebody in a long time, but doesn’t get long to feel warm about that. Burgie’s hand claps itself firmly onto Snafu’s shoulder, making him jump.

“Alright, we ready?” Burgie asks, and that particular silence from Eugene is lost.

“Ready as we’ll ever be,” Eugene replies, and Snafu can practically hear the smile he must be levelling in Burgie’s direction. He rolls his eyes, and they separate. 

The streets are quiet, and dark, only the glow from the moon to light their way. It shimmers slickly in the puddles, over the bodies of the cars they use as cover. Catching in Eugene’s hair, on the silver cross strung about Burgie’s throat, shining in the open collar of his shirt. Every time Snafu looks to Eugene, the kid’s eyes are on him, black in the darkness. It makes the hairs on the back of his neck prickle, makes him wonder just what Eugene was going to say — 

No, not helpful. Snafu shoves the curiosity down. The only helpful emotions now are wariness, watchfulness. Snafu keeps his eyes on the horizon and his heart like stone in his chest. 

They take open spaces at a run, hunched down low; Burgie, Bill, Eugene, and Snafu taking up the rear. A couple times they’re forced into alleyways, into buildings, the four of them silent and bunched together, chests heaving as some unfamiliar presence rolls by. Snafu notices Eugene favouring his good ankle again, but there’s no time to worry about it now. 

A car passes by, and Snafu watches as Burgie presses Eugene low with a hand on his shoulder. The expression that the headlights illuminate on Eugene’s face is open, trusting, eyes turned up to Burgie’s. Snafu tries to tell himself the pulse of jealousy he feels is useful; a harnessable emotion, just to feel it a little longer. 

Gradually, the city begins to melt around them. Row-homes give way to empty lots, which gave way to fields, to big dilapidated houses falling prey to their overgrown lawns. As they begin to get clear from the outskirts, they slow, take it easier; Bill laughs loudly, and Burgie doesn’t make a move to shush him. The noise rings out through the night. Snafu lights a cigarette, and keeps his eyes on the back of Eugene’s neck. 

“So which way you headed?” Burgie asks, when the city is nothing more than the vague shapes of dark buildings behind them. Eugene glances to Snafu, who shrugs. 

“North.” It’s as much information as he’s willing to give. Snafu hasn’t gotten this far by trusting every kind-faced person he’s run across. He thinks of the look Eugene had given Burgie, when he’d pressed him down out of sight of the car’s headlights. Does Eugene know that he’s safer with Snafu? 

“North,” Burgie parrots, and nods. “Well, you guys wanna set up camp ’til mornin’ with us, or do you gotta move on up North right away? 

Snafu slides his eyes towards Eugene, who has his head down, doggedly putting one foot in front of the other despite the pain that’s tightening his mouth. “I think we can manage that,” Snafu mutters, and endures the slap on the back that Burgie treats him to. He hasn’t let on about Eugene’s injured ankle, and surprisingly, neither has Eugene. Maybe he does have some sense of a survival instinct after all.

They choose a copse of trees to bed down in for the night, set far enough back from the road that even Snafu finds it in himself to relax a little. Despite the previous night’s dead sleep, he feels exhausted; that bone deep kind of tiredness that comes with being so completely alert every hour of the day. Grudgingly, he has to admit it’s nice to have others to travel with, even if he doesn’t quite trust them fully. It takes some of the pressure off him; it means that when Bill produces a little flask of something strong after they’ve all eaten, Snafu drinks some, and lets the warmth from it drift all the way down to his toes.

“For the cigarette,” Bill tells him, with a grin. “Now we’re even.”

When it comes to bed down, Snafu finds himself wide awake, despite the alcohol induced dreaminess that he hopes isn’t interacting too much with his head wound. It’s sending him towards thoughtfulness, eyes on the clear night sky through the trees, Eugene so still by his side that Snafu knows he isn’t asleep.

“I’m glad we got out of there,” Eugene murmurs, and Snafu hums. “Do you think we’re gonna keep travellin’ with Burgie and Bill?” 

A beat of silence. “Do you want to?” Snafu asks, not sure if he wants to hear the answer. 

“Maybe.”

They’re quiet for a time, the sounds of the world flooding in to fill their silence. Snafu’s mind is a tipsy swirl of everything he’s been thinking over the past handful of days, every soft warm thought and every jealous one. He’s never felt so mean and so unforthcoming than he has the last twelve hours, watching how Eugene seems to lean into Burgie’s warmth. “Do you think I keep you safe?” he asks the sky.

The frown is thick in Eugene’s voice when he replies, “Yes, of course I do. Why?”

Silence. The liquor is making Snafu’s tongue clumsy. Finally, he bites out, “Do you wish someone else had been picked to take you?” 

He senses Eugene sit up, but doesn’t look to him. Just keeps his eyes on the sky, and listens as Eugene asks, “What’s making you ask that?” 

Snafu grunts. He hopes Burgie and Bill can’t hear their conversation. “I dunno. I know I ain’t got an easy nature to me.”

The trees shift above them. At Snafu’s side, Eugene flops back down to his sleeping bag, and sighs. Snafu doesn’t dare look at him now, after saying that. Vulnerability makes him nauseous.

“I like your personality,” Eugene says, finally. “I like it, and the rest of it too. The real stuff, under all that.”

Snafu blinks up into the darkness. The stars seem to peer back; everything does. Never in his life has he felt so _looked at_. Then, just as he’s beginning to obsess over it, he feels a hand touch his, the familiar squeeze of Eugene’s fingers around his own. 

He squeezes back, and the creature in his chest sighs.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading!!


End file.
